by LongRunner » November 21st, 2013, 11:34 am
Just a thought of mine...do you think replacing the electrolytic capacitor in a two-transistor +5VSB circuit with a ceramic capacitor would be a simple way to improve the reliability??? I've just checked and it seems you can get through-hole multilayer types up to 4.7µF 50V with 2.5mm lead pitch (close enough to the 2mm pitch of 5mm radial electrolytics that it shouldn't be an issue). I would love to know how well it works, as while two-transistor oscillators will never be as good as the ICs, at least ceramic capacitors are reliable enough that I would be fairly confident about the PC's safety. I might actually try it myself when I get what I need.
Information is far more fragile than the HDDs it's stored on. Being an afterthought is no excuse for a bad product.
My PC: Core i3 4130 on GA‑H87M‑D3H with GT640 OC 2GiB and 2×8GiB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz, Exascend EXSAM1A240GV125CCE and ST10000VE001, Optiarc AD‑7200S, Seasonic G‑360, Chenbro PC31031, Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3.
Backups (external): ST3160827AS with Agere+SH6950 (S‑tier), ST3750640AS with Agere+SH6960 (A‑tier) and WD3003FZEX‑00Z4SA0 (B‑tier).
